In Memorium

As a design team member, I try my best to work ahead on my projects so that I am prepared to share them. However, in mid-to-late February, Life said hello with a baseball bat laden with a few ten-pound weights. What a blow! My mother, who has suffered from Alzheimer’s for probably ten years or more but for whom nursing care had only been required for the last six, died. She died not quite ten years after our father but ten years after, nonetheless. I find the numerology associated with my parents’ lives interesting. My mother was born in 29. She died at 89 in 2019. My father was born in September, the 9^th month and died in 2009. Nine is a divine number. It represents the end of cycles. And here my family resides, our parents’ physical lives complete, the cycle resolved. And yet, memory exists as a wind traveling across the moors of grief and the warm embrace of Jacob’s ladder.

And, so, I found myself at home looking at my intended project and deciding that it wasn’t where my head or my heart needed to be. I couldn’t share it and write lovingly about it, so I set to the lovely task of creating. . .something. What it was, I wouldn’t know in the beginning. I could only allow it to evolve. I began with the idea of a memory piece for my parents. Purple kept coming to my mind, so I created a couple of sheets of handmade purple paper mixed with fresh blackberries and acrylic inks to vamp up the color. I contemplated next steps when I happened to remember some castings I had created. These consisted of an angel, some wings, and a statue of an angel holding a basin. Armed with those and a print of my parents in their wedding clothes, I constructed a shadow box. With embossing powder to give the piece a bit of a heavenly shine and bits of ephemera that signify time and religion, I created a piece that honors both of my parents in memory of what was important to them and what felt loving and resolved for me.

While this piece may come across as my way of handling grief, it is really more about memory and family history, a celebration of lives well-lived. In the shadow box are housed the intricate details of two lives. It is more than a static picture. It is a 3D culmination of the most important parts of a life: birth, life and love, death, remembrance, continuance.

Want to make something similar for your ancestors?

Materials

Medium Pour Handmold https://arnoldgrummer.com/medium-pour-handmold.html
Cotton Lintner Pre-shredded https://arnoldgrummer.com/cotton-linter-pre-shredded-8-oz-package.html
Silicone molds
Two or three fresh blackberries
Acrylic Ink in purple and black
Embossing Powder
Pearl Ex powder for highlighting the castings
Ephemera (watch, chipboard cross, bead, handwritten letter, rusted piece of metal)
Shadow box 6 x 18
Gorilla Glue (clear, non-foaming) for heavy ephemera
Aleene’s Tacky Glue for paper and light ephemera
Lace
Floral sprig
Scor-Tape

Anne Marie

Want to know more about me? Find me online at:

Website: https://www.mysticspringstudios.com

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